Christian identities in Singapore: religion, race and culture between state controls and transnational flows

Abstract

Christianity in Singapore is caught between the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand it is compelled (like all other religions practised in Singapore) to conform to the state's controls (most obviously in the form of the ‘Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act’, but also implicitly or explicitly spelt out in various policies on religious space and practices, multiculturalism, and even matters of financial governance and accountability). On the other hand, Christianity (unlike religions with a traditional racial association such as Islam with the Malays, and Buddhism, Taoism and traditional Chinese practices with the Chinese) is also seen as a religion associated with ‘outside’ or ‘Western’ cultural influences, one which is obliged to grow its community of adherents at the expense of one of the other race-based religions. This positioning obliges Christianity in Singapore to constantly rationalize and adapt its processes on two fronts, simultaneously to locate itself within the nation as a rooted aspect of the national community, and also to capitalize on its global networks and its affinities to capitalist modernity. In this sense, it constantly has to undergo a version of what Aihwa Ong calls a ‘flexible’ positioning, creating (or at least appearing to create) a “modernity without deracination” (1999, p. 52). This paper examines some of the key characteristics of this positioning, particularly Christianity's establishment of the discourses and practices of national ‘values’ such as the Asian family, interfaith dialogue and concerned social development.

Keywords:

• Christianity
• Singapore
• race/ethnicity
• cultural landscape
• policy

State constraints on and regulations of religious practices in Singapore

In Singapore, religion and race are often very closely intertwined, so that the policy and governance affecting the one also, to varying extents, affect the other. As various scholars have noted, Singapore's multicultural policy works through “a process of simplification and symbolic representation” (Chua 1998, p. 190), through which “race becomes ‘highly politicized’ as an essential ideological category” (Clammer 1998, p. 49). The example that is often quoted is that of the ‘mother tongue’ language policy: students who are Singaporeans or Permanent Residents are required to study one of the three official mother tongues of Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, although students may appeal to substitute Urdu, Hindi, Gujerati or another such language in place of Tamil (Ministry of Education, ‘Mother Tongue Language Policy’). The policy thus has the effect of reinforcing a simplification of race into the ‘official’ categories; racial identity is pegged on cultural practice (in this case, the learning and use of a ‘mother tongue’), so that to be Chinese is to speak Mandarin, and to speak Mandarin is ‘Chineseness’.

A similar type of symmetrical identification is obtained with regard to many aspects of the cultural practice of religion in Singapore, where according to the 2000 census of the population approximately 42% of the resident population is Buddhist, just under 15% Muslim, 14% each Christian and professing no religion, 8% Taoist, and 4% Hindu (Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 1). The 2000 census revealed “a strong correlation among ethnicity, home language and … religion among the Malays and Indians”, where “almost all Malay-speaking residents were Muslims while most Tamil-speaking residents were Hindus” (Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 7). Virtually all Malays were Muslims. While Indians practised three main religions – Hinduism, Islam and Christianity – there was a remarkable degree of stability in terms of the distribution of religions within the Indian community from 1980 to 2000, with Hinduism only changing from 56 to 55% in that period, Islam from 22 to 25% and Christianity remained at 12% (Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 4). This type of statistical stability, where it is obtained, is reinforced by the cultural segmentation within communities: the consistency of Hindu Indians rests largely on the perpetuation of that religion in Tamil-speaking Indian households, who constituted 75% of Hindu adherents – a figure which hardly changed from 1990 to 2000. Similarly, 98% of Muslims spoke Malay at home, again, hardly varying from 1990 to 2000, which is not surprising considering that almost all Malays in Singapore are Muslims, but that does point to the strong degree of correlation between race, language and religion. The Chinese population in Singapore is more varied, and less easily identified with one religion or language: 53% profess Buddhism, 18% profess no religion, 16% profess Christianity and 10% profess Taoism (Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 4).

The Chinese show much more variability in religious affiliation over time compared to the Malays and Indians, with significant increases in the Buddhist adherents from 1980 to 2000 (from 34% to 53%), a noticeable increase in Christians (almost 11% to 16%), a slight increase in those professing no religion (16% to 18%), and a significant decline in those professing Taoism (38% to 10%). However, these differences within the Chinese population are strongly correlated to cultural factors such as language: “Christians formed the largest group among the English-speaking” segment of the Chinese population, and “Buddhism and Taoism, the traditional Chinese religions, were the main religions of the Mandarin- and dialect-speaking populations” (Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 7). The distribution of Chinese Christians by language most frequently spoken is uneven, but consistent over the years: 39% of English-speaking Chinese profess Christianity, compared to only 8% among Mandarin-speakers and just under 10% among speakers of Chinese dialects, and these figures show little variation from 1990 to 2000. Buddhism makes slight headway in the same period among English-speaking Chinese (from 21% to 24%), but increases very significantly among the Mandarin- and Dialect-speaking Chinese (43% to 60%, and 43% to 61%, respectively; Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 7).

Socio-economic factors also play a part in the reinforcement of these racial and religious identities: Christianity is strongly correlated with households living in the more expensive private property (as opposed to public housing) and who have attained university-level education (who in turn tend to speak predominantly English at home). These socio-economic factors matter most among the Chinese, who exhibit the greatest degree of variability in religious practice. In general, Christian Chinese form a distinct grouping among the Chinese, exhibiting what might be called ‘elite’ modernized qualities which tend to segregate them from other Chinese who speak Mandarin or Chinese dialects, live in the public housing in common with the majority (about 80%) of Singaporeans, and accordingly practice the “traditional Chinese religions” (Department of Statistics 2000a, p. 1) of Buddhism or Taoism cum traditional Chinese practices such as ancestor worship.1

It should, of course, be noted that this connection between religion and racial-cultural identity is itself at least partly the effect of a type of self-perpetuating institutional narrative and taxonomy. The official data-gathering mechanisms themselves, like the mother tongue educational policy, rely on and reinforce certain racial categories and thus also their religious associations. In the first place, the repeated insistence on the ‘four official races’ of Chinese, Malays, Indians and Others already constitutes a constant pressure to align one's identity along these official racial distinctions. The categories often prove problematic, as for example that of ‘Indians’, which puts together North and South Indians, Tamil speakers and speakers of other languages, descendants of Indian, Sri Lankan, Pakistani and Bangladeshi, and all other elements which might accrue to the broad regional category of ‘South Asian’, with the extremely complex histories and sociologies of schisms and factionalisms that that region has experienced. The category of ‘Malays’, while probably less markedly heterogeneous, still combines together people of Bugis, Minangkabau, Boyanese, Arab and other ethnicities with the dominant group of early settlers of Orang Laut and archipelago Malay descent. The term ‘Chinese’ covers a large group constituting the majority of the Singapore population, and combines together people of such varying cultural, economic and linguistic backgrounds as the localized descendents of early Chinese settlers in the ‘Nanyang’, Asian-American and Anglophone professionals, Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong business elites, Mandarin-speakers from the PRC, and others. As is often observed, ‘Others’ (inconsistent with the other terms) is not even a racial group, but rather a catch-all term of convenience.

Apart from being used in government data collection and categorization, the official racial categories are also institutionally-enforced in acts of registering identity such as on the National Registration Identity Card (NRIC), the Certificate of Registration of Birth, and numerous application forms and datasets used by government agencies, statutory boards and even private-sector agencies. The official racial terms clearly have the effect of reducing factional (or sub-racial, according to the official terms) difference by re-writing these into an imagined racial category, towards the goal of national integration. In this way they have a kind of self-reinforcing circularity, compelling individuals to habituate themselves with a particular racial identification, while using that racial grouping as a discrete and stable identity because they effectively contain and categorize individuals in everyday life.

Having said this, and with due recognition of the sub-groupings within the broad official racial categories, it is true that the practice of religion in Singapore is closely bound to racial-cultural identities to a high degree. This continues to be a source of surprise, considering the nation's multi-racial and multi-cultural composition and its relatively high degree of modernization and openness (whether measured in terms of education, per capita GNP, global city aspirations, or similar yardsticks). This must in many ways be attributed to factors of governance, not merely the constant reiteration of the official racial categories through institutional measures such as the mother tongue educational policy and the gathering and dissemination of statistical data, but also through measures directly regulating the practice of religion.

One fundamental institutional mechanism regulating religious practice is the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, passed in Novem ber 1990, which makes it an offence to “cause ill-feelings between different religious groups” (Ministry of Information and the Arts 1992, p. 1). The Act, which comes under the aegis of the Minister for Home Affairs (who is advised by a Presidential Council for Religious Harmony), allows for the making of ‘restraining orders’ against any religious leader who (among other things) may cause “feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different religious groups” (Attorney-General's Chambers, ‘Maintenance’). There are non-governmental interfaith organizations such as the Inter-Religious Organization (IRO), whose work is promotional or constructive in nature – in the language of the IRO, “to inculate the spirit of friendship and cooperation among the leaders and followers of different religions” (Inter-Religious Organisation Singapore 2007, ‘Objectives’). In contrast, the work of the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act is actively restrictive, explicitly policing and reinforcing the boundaries between the religions by restraining any person who “has committed or is attempting to commit” an act which may be interpreted as causing “enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility” between religious groups (Attorney-General's Chambers, ‘Maintenance’). The effectiveness of the Act is due in significant degree to the looseness of key terms, especially the term ‘ill-will’ (or the even more vague ‘ill-feelings’), which compels religious groups to err on the side of caution in whatever relations they may have, or comments they may make, about any other group, so as to prevent any possibility of ‘ill-feelings’ (Attorney-General's Chambers, ‘Maintenance’; Ministry of Information and the Arts 1992, p. 1). Here too, the link between religion and race, religious and racial harmony, is fairly obvious: the Chairman and other members of the key Presidential Council for Religious Harmony are appointed by the President, on the advice of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights, and can similarly be removed by the President on the latter's advice. The Presidential Council for Minority Rights is explicitly concerned with “such matters affecting persons of any racial or religious community in Singapore”; while in principle this protects each racial or religious group in Singapore equally (even as it reinforced the association of race and religion, and heightens the boundaries defining these communities), in practice the Malays (who are effectively identified with the Muslim religion) are singled out for particular attention under the Singapore constitution (Attorney-General's Chambers, ‘Constitution’, Articles 76, 152, 153). The constitution declares that:

The Government shall exercise its functions in such manner as to recognize the special position of the Malays, who are the indigenous people of Singapore, and accordingly it shall be the responsibility of the Government to protect, safeguard, support, foster and promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social and cultural interests and the Malay language. (Attorney-General's Chambers, ‘Constitution’, Article 152)

The ‘religious interests’ of the Malays are also safeguarded by Article 153 of the Constitution, which provides for a Council to advise the President on “matters relating to the Muslim religion”. This ‘special’ attention to Islam and (largely Malay) Muslims of course cuts both ways: while it guarantees the immediacy of Muslim needs and interests in the eyes of the government and in standing policy as compared to the other religions, it also means a closer scrutiny of Muslim affairs under the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura or MUIS, whose members are appointed by the President of Singapore (Kong 1993, p. 35).

This fundamental association of race with culture, particularly religion, – especially true of the Malays and Islam, but, partly for that reason, extending to the other races and religions as well – is reinforced by a number of policies which govern the use of religious space in Singapore. As Kong (1993, p. 28) points out, the construction of new religious buildings in Singapore is governed by “precise planning standards” which, apart from working on mathematical ratios, also serve to segregate and balance the major religions. In the planning standards employed by the Housing and Development Board, in whose estates the majority of these new religious buildings are to be found, space for one Chinese temple is allocated per 9000 dwelling units (du), for one church per 12,000 du, one mosque per 20,000 du, and one Hindu temple per 90,000 du (Kong 1993, p. 28). Religious organizations tender for these allocated spaces, but they are only permitted to tender for the space allocated for their religion, regardless of the plural denominational, sects or bodies that may be involved, and of the number of bidders. The result, as Kong (1993, pp. 28–29) observes, is that certain religious groups, particularly the various Christian denominations, face an under-supply of available sites and are often “locked in fierce competition in tendering for land”.

The government also controls the ‘conversion’ and utilization of existing building/space for religious purposes; the condemnation and demolition of religious buildings and their preservation as national heritage sites; the conduct of public religious celebrations and processions; the establishment and general conduct of schools affiliated with religious groups, under its educational policy; and even the teaching of religion in all schools – whether or not religious education should be taught, and in what manner – as the experiment in the state-instituted ‘Religious Knowledge Curriculum’ from 1984 to 1989 indicates (Gopinathan 1995, pp. 20, 23; Kong 1993, pp. 29–35; 2005). Ultimately, as Kong (1993, p. 34) observes, “despite the rhetoric about freedom of worship, it could be argued that the state reserves enough power to define religious places, and, at a larger level, religion itself”.

Having described the government's careful circumscription of a state religious sphere – the effective overlap of religious and racial factors, the attendant simplification of racial categories, and the executive control over religious and racial harmony afforded by the Religious Harmony Act – it should be pointed out that religion in Singapore is not entirely coterminous with and controlled by this (admittedly efficient) state sphere. There are noticeable religious flows – both in terms of people movements and cultural influences – which cross the constructed boundaries of this official religious sphere. Examples include the significant numbers of Filipinos living and working in Singapore, many as domestic helpers, who are Catholics (and to a lesser extent Protestant Christians), and who form significant parts of the congregations such churches as Novena church on Thomson Road and Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in the downtown area (Yeoh and Huang 1998). Another example of transnational religious flows includes the fact that the Hindu temple priests in Singapore are almost exclusively expatriates brought in from India (Chua 2008, p. B8). These and other ‘incoming’ religious flows may contest the boundaries of the state religious sphere, and suggest the permeability of some parts of its membrane. However, they do not yet fundamentally challenge that constructed state religious sphere, which is built upon tightly-controlled spaces and institutions – religious buildings, citizenship, the legal sphere – that effectively demarcate and differentiate a dominant ‘state religion’ from lesser transnational currents.2

The place of Christianity: deracination versus modernization

Within this climate of the conflation of racial and religious identities, close racial-religious governance, and the emphasis of the boundaries and definitions between religions under the aegis of ‘religious harmony’, Christianity in Singapore occupies a peculiar position. This might be discussed at two levels: the ideological/doctrinal, to do with Christianity's evangelical monotheism; and the structural/cultural, to do with Christianity's origins, affiliations and institutional forms and processes. These aspects of Christianity, as they interact with social conditions in Singapore, ensure that Christianity occupies a distinctive and often uncomfortable position, bereft of the traditional values often imputed to the other main religions, while also regarded with a certain degree of wariness and suspicion.

In ideological/doctrinal terms, Christianity has the evangelical imperative which requires its adherents to “go … and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28: 19, KJV). The obedience to the ‘Great Commission’ (as this injunction at the end of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark is known) is a general characteristic of Protestant and even many Catholic and Orthodox churches in Singapore, cutting across denominations, and the labels of ‘evangelical’, ‘charismatic’, ‘traditional’, ‘contemporary’, ‘fundamental’ and other categories of churches. Thus the New Life Bible Presbyterian Church, part of the Bible Presbyterian denomination which is generally regarded as on the more ‘fundamental’ end of the spectrum (with a heavy emphasis on the Bible as the infallible and inerrant Word of God, usually accompanied by a rejection of ‘contemporary’ and ‘charismatic’ features such as speaking in tongues and the use of a worship band featuring electric instruments), nevertheless evinces an evangelical enthusiasm in the declaration on its webpage that “our ministries help us to fulfill the Great Commission of making disciples of Christ” (New Life Bible, ‘Ministries’). The Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore signals its evangelical intentions with, among other things, its Archdiocesan Commission for Missionary Activities (ACMA) and its New Evangelical Team (NET) (Archdiocese of Singapore, ‘Commissions’). Certainly, the larger independent and mainline-denomination churches (including City Harvest Church, New Creation Church, Faith Community Baptist Church, Wesley Methodist Church and Church of Our Saviour), some of which have total congregations in excess of 15,000, are very dynamic and proactive in a number of ways, including in ways of spreading the Gospel and increasing their memberships. While the Great Commission work is often misunderstood (by non-Christians and Christians alike) and seen as a ‘bragging right’ for the numbers of converts an individual or a church has won, in all fairness it should also be pointed out that there is also a strongly compassionate motivation as well; Christianity teaches that those who do not accept Jesus Christ are lost and will suffer ‘torment’ in ‘hell’, as the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16: 19–31) shows. Christians are taught that they are the “watchmen” for their societies (Ezekiel 3: 17–21) and that they have to bear responsibility for those around them who “die in their iniquity” because they have not been duly warned. Thus Christianity is not just an eschatological religion (as is Islam), but one which also places responsibility on individual believers for the judgement that will be delivered on others in their circle of influence.

The Great Commission follows from the uncompromising monotheism of Christianity: the first two of the Ten Commandments instruct believers that “thou shalt have no other gods before me” and “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness” of any creature or object, nor “bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20: 3–5, KJV). While Islam also shares this strict monotheism and the injunction against making images of God, this doctrine is in quite stark contrast to the eclectic inclusivism of other religions. It is true that fundamentalist groups can be found in practically any religion or creed – acts of violence have, after all, been perpetrated in recent times in the name of both Protestant and Catholic Christianity (in Northern Ireland), Buddhism (Sri Lanka), Sikhism and Hinduism (India), as well as other faiths. However, the acts of particular groups with extremist views should not be confused with the essential doctrine of a religion and the views of believers in general. It is still true that for many Hindus and Buddhists, for example, the existence and validity of a creator God such as asserted by Christianity (and indeed, for some, even the divinity of Jesus Christ) is not seen as a threatening fact or one that is completely irreconcilable with their own faiths and belief systems. In contrast, for Christianity, the claim for and worship of other deities is a direct contradiction of their fundamental belief in the sole and sovereign divinity of their God.

The combination of the evangelical imperative, eschatological fear, compassion for the salvation of others, exclusive monotheism and injunction against idolatry, together serve to put Christianity in a highly disjunctive and segregated position in relation to all other religions. Although other religions, or other sects or interpretations within the other religions, may share one or more of these factors, it is the combination and cumulative effect of all of these that gives Christianity its uniquely driven and motivated character vis a vis the other religions. While institutional Christianity in its best and most sociable aspect may assume a face of openness and tolerance in respect of other religions, the fact that at its doctrinal and ideological level it is isolated by its sense of its own proselytizing mission, should not be overlooked.

At the structural/cultural level, too, Christianity in Singapore is often cast in a different light from the other main religions. Historically, Christianity came to Singapore in the colonial era: the London Missionary Society was the first to establish itself in Singapore, and was augmented by Anglican and Catholic missions later in the nineteenth century. More and more denominations arrived as the settlement prospered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These missions (apart from select churches which ministered to the European population) focused on social amelioration among the majority of poor Asian immigrants: they were pioneers especially in offering Anglophone education to native children, and in the education of girls (who were traditionally considered to be less worthy of an education than boys). The majority of students in the mission schools were Chinese, not just because they were the majority, but also because they were most open to the perceived socio-economic benefits of an Anglophone education for their children. Inevitably, however, there were fears that a mission school education would result in cultural deracination in the form of picking up Western ways and values, and particularly in the loss of traditional Chinese religious beliefs and practices.3 There were also perceptions up to at least the early part of the twentieth century among the majority of the non-English speaking natives that Christian institutions, for example the YMCA that was opened in 1903, were little more than social clubs catering almost exclusively to the Europeans and perpetuating their values and manners, including in them the small group of English-educated native elites who were permitted to participate in their cultural and sporting activities (Goh 2007).

Thus Christianity and Christian institutions were inevitably aligned with colonial rule and the cultural hegemony of the Europeans. Stanley (1990, pp. 11–14) points out that in many formerly-colonized nations, the perception that the missionary movement was “part and parcel of the colonial or neo-colonial system” is rampant, often persisting after independence and forming an obstacle to any revised role of Christian organizations. Singapore's experience with colonialism, and its anti-colonial struggle and process of de-colonization, were probably less bitter than those of some other countries (Indonesia and the Philippines, to name just two neighbouring ones). The missionary movements of the colonial era also left in Singapore an enduring and valued legacy of mission school education, with some of the oldest and best-known schools in the nation being mission schools. Nevertheless, it remains true that Christianity's history in Singapore is inextricably bound to colonial memories of being ruled by the British and subject to the values they imposed.

Christianity in Singapore is thus inevitably seen as a relatively recent entrant, very much an outsider compared to the ‘Asian’ religions of Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. Although it can of course be argued that Christianity is ultimately a semitic religion like Islam, its global development in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, and its hi story in many Asian countries, very much align Christianity with European modernity. In the case of a small and rapidly-changing nation like Singapore, with ambitions to be a global city and a tourism and financial services hub, the attitude towards that modernity and the risk it may pose to cultural traditionalism, is clearly going to be an ambivalent rather than outrightly hostile one. Christianity in Singapore is marked by a high degree of globalization relative to the other religions; the mainline denominations such as the Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians and others of course have affiliations, of varying forms and varying degrees of formality, with their respective global organizations. The large independent churches, the so-called ‘megachurches’ such as City Harvest and New Creation, characteristically operate and network transnationally (for example, New Creation has a close working relationship with the well-known Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia). Many of the essentially globalized Christian organizations – not merely the ubiquitous and diversified-service ones such as The Salvation Army, the YMCA and YWCA, but also the specifically evangelical organizations such as Youth with a Mission (YWAM), Serving in Missions (SIM), World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), Youth for Christ, Operation Mobilization (OM), Asia Evangelistic Fellowship (AEF) and others – have regional bases or offices in Singapore and are actively involved in Christian ministry (Goh 2005b, p. 838). There is typically little inflow of funding from international Christian organizations based, for example, in the US or UK, because Singapore is seen as a relatively rich country capable of raising its own funding for ministry purposes. Yet there are clear organizational links and networking relationships which mark Christianity as a religion, with strong international ties, particularly to Anglophone countries with evangelical organizations, such as the US Christianity, with its association with Anglophone education and socio-economic elites, is thus both a desirable and fashionable religion (especially among young people with Anglophone educations) for its global and elite associations, as well as a suspect one for its problematic relationship to core national values.

In this sense, the social position of Anglophone Christians tends to be similar to that of highly-educated, internationally-mobile ‘cosmopolitan’ Singaporeans, who ‘speak English’ and can function practically anywhere in the world, and who are both a source of pride as well as of concern for the nation. The distinction between ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘heartland’ Singaporeans – the latter of modest education and means, assumed to be local in outlook and operation, and who maintain the nation's “core values and … social stability” – was first established in then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's 1999 National Day Rally Speech, and has since then become an implicit structural dichotomy in governance and the shaping of Singapore society (Goh 1999; Goh 2005a, pp. 92–109). While cosmopolitans are valued for their economic savvy and international capability which are expected to contribute much to Singapore's global push, by the same token they also indicate the downside of globalization, where talented Singaporeans will be tempted to leave the nation for greener pastures. In contrast, although heartlanders lack the Anglophone competence, education and talent to be able to function effectively in an age of globalization, they by the same token reinforce ‘core values’ and ‘social stability’ by their very stolidity and immobility (Goh 1999).

Although it has never been explicitly stated as such in governmental discourses, the fact is that Christianity in Singapore shares many social characteristics with cosmopolitanism. Both are characterized by a high incidence of Anglophone usage, a high incidence of university education, residence in relatively expensive private property, and related elite qualities. Both feed into ambivalent attitudes towards the globally-networked vis-à-vis the sphere of local values (Goh 2005a, pp. 147–149). Of course, not all Christians in Singapore use English as their main language; there are a significant number of Chinese-stream churches in most of the main denominations, which use Mandarin and in some cases Chinese dialects as the medium of worship, and there are also churches which use Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam and other South Asian languages. In addition, not all Christians in Singapore have university degrees, live in private housing and generally occupy the upper echelons of the socio-economic ladder. However, the fact that Christianity is the main religion among the Anglophone, university-educated and private-housing dwelling sectors of the population looms large not just in the statistics, but also in the public consciousness. Perhaps more to the point, Christianity occupies an analogous position to cosmopolitanism within a binary logic (Christianity-‘traditional’ religions; comopolitanism-heartlander; successful-struggling) which increasingly dominates the social consciousness and public discourse. In this binarism, it is not of course believed that Christianity is the sole or sufficient cause for this social divide, but that it reinforces and exacerbates the divide by playing a role in perpetuating social differences (through the machinery of Christian schools, social networks, the Anglophone cultural environment, and so on), and that it heightens the perception of a cultural-religious divide within Singapore society.

A number of incidences and public debates in recent years have confirmed this peculiar position of Christianity. In 2005, in the climate of heightened religious sensitivities following 9/11 and subsequent acts of terror, a number of complaints surfaced about Christian doctors and other professionals attempting to convert their clients in the course of their professional interactions with them. These complaints and the public awareness they raised echoed a larger ‘uneasiness’ in Singapore society about “Christians who are perceived to be over-aggressive in promoting their faith”, in the words of a newspaper report covering the issue (Li and Kwek 2005, p. S8). The fact that Christianity is singled out (none of the other dominant religions in Singapore were mentioned) reveals not just a general anxiety about Christianity's peculiar position as a function of its strongly evangelical and exclusively monotheistic ideology, but also the close association between Christianity and the professional ranks in Singapore. Attempting to sum up the issue and the debate that it provoked, a newspaper article stressed that “doctors and teachers occupy positions of authority”, which makes the fact that there are strong and active Christian fellowships in these two professions (the Teachers’ Christian Fellowship, which claims that up to half of the teachers in Singapore are Christian; and the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship) all the more cause for concern (Li and Kwok 2005, p. S8). Christianity gets singled out, in both the public debates and the media representations, not just because of the evangelical zeal of its adherents, but also because of the underlying anxiety about their domination of ‘positions of authority, in this case, the professions of medicine and teaching.

As always in Singapore, racial policies and anxieties also enter to complicate the religious landscape. In its application of its multi-racial policy, the government has long been concerned with the special position of the Malays, and this has been echoed by elements within the Malay community as well. Thus one of the 2000 Census of Population's interpretation of the economic characteristics of households is that “the Malays have the highest economic dependency ratio” and the highest rate of “economically inactive members” (Department of Statistics 2000b, p. 10). Websites mounted by the Malay community, such as the Kampung Net, not only concur with this anxiety about the economic under-performance specifically of the Malay community, but also use indicators such as type of property owned, educational level, type of occupation and others, in order to offer a rolling measure of the Malay community's progress. The fact that the Kampung Net, as a website seeking to articulate the Malay community's concerns and voices, also, and unsurprisingly, has an explicitly religious dimension (with a section for a ‘Daily Doa’ or prayer, and another section selling books and CDs on Islamic culture and religion) just reinforces the link between race and religion in the context of socio-economic anxieties in Singapore.

The case of the Malays in Singapore may be the clearest and most discrete example of a general condition of socio-cultural traditionalism which is also played out in the other races. Traditionalism in terms of the speaking mainly of vernacular languages at home tends to be associated with lower levels of education and property owned, and with higher participation in the respective ‘traditional’ religion for each group. Networking patterns then tend to perpetuate these social identities. In contrast, higher levels of education (which are usually Anglophone in character) are generally correlated with a ‘mo dernizing’ willingness to abandon or at least ameliorate the cultural traditionalism of religion, language and educational and occupational expectations. If Christianity (especially the sub-set of Anglophone Christians) is clearly associated with cosmopolitan elitism, this sets it in implicit opposition to the heartland traditionalism which tends to occupy the opposite end of the socio-economic scale. Christianity, like cosmopolitanism, is then cast in the role of the deracinating outward-oriented element, as opposed to the ‘core values’ of a kind of Singaporean traditionalism, which is defined as much by cultural traits (such as vernacular language, and implicitly religion) as by capability and opportunity (the lack of Anglophone competence, higher education and social networks which would permit or encourage the heartlander to operate in a transnational milieu). Once again, public perceptions and the anxieties recorded in public discourses are at least as significant, if not more so, than the absolute coincidence of religious and socio-economic categories.

‘Flexible’ identities and Christian strategies

Aihwa Ong's (1999) notion of ‘flexible citizenship’, as an account of Chinese identities in the face of transnational networks and movements, also offers us a way of understanding the transformation of other social identities such as religious ones under conditions of rapid global changes. Ong observes the “sinicization of the modernization project” in China in the Deng period and after, and the ways in which this involved a re-invention of the relationship between China and the diasporic Chinese, including (among other strategies) a notion of Confucianism employed “with fruitful ambiguity” in order to be as inclusive without sacrificing traditional Chinese values and “shared cultural traits” (1999, pp. 37, 40–43). The motivation is to tap into global capital flows (which the Chinese diaspora is seen as being able to facilitate) while maintaining the distinctiveness of a ‘Chinese’ character and identity which would preserve the hegemony of the state. It is not only the institutionalizing body (in this case, the Chinese state) which employs such motivated flexibility, but also the individual subjects of this institutional influence (Chinese diasporic businessmen), who submit to this role as one of their several transnational identities, selectively playing it up (in the form of participating in Chinese customs, dress, manner, rituals and language) on occasions when it suits their commercial interests.

Elsewhere, Ong (2003, p. 399) sees a similar flexible institutionalism in a religious context, that of Malay Muslim women in the expanding economy of Malaysia in the 1970s and 1980s. While on the one hand the economic contribution of these Muslim women workers was necessary to the state and to their individual families, the conservative and male-dominated ethos of Islam had to be preserved as well. The result was a flourishing of the practice of wearing the mini-telekung (an item of clothing covering the head, hair and chest). What is also interesting in this case is the way in which the Muslim women acceded to the identity thrust upon them. Thus the dakwa movement of the 1980s, which saw many working Muslim women find ‘refuge’ in the wearing of the mini-telekung, evinces a kind of eagerness on the part of the disciplined subject to submit to a discipline which in the same gesture allows the subject to then enjoy the desired economic modernity while preserving an identity which is still approved by the institution of religious traditionalism (Ong 2003, pp. 396, 398).

In a similar way, Christianity in Singapore can be seen as readily submitting to state-imposed constraints in order not only to establish flourishing areas of ministry in Singapore, but also to do so in ways that insert them into a re-invented role within ‘core’ national values. This involves a kind of flexible identity in which Christianity's peculiarly evangelical and outward-oriented identity is preserved, even as it participates in the common social-bonding activities close to the Singapore ‘heartland’.

One of the most significant ways in which Singapore churches preserve a flexible and dual identity is in channelling the bulk of their evangelical zeal and energies outside of Singapore's shores, thus also avoiding the types of inter-faith tensions at home which might be construed as violations of the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Act. With their wealth of resources (not just finances, but well-trained professionals, administrators, pastors and church ministry trainers, and so on), Singapore churches (especially the larger independent churches and the denominational bodies) are well positioned to provide a variety of services to needy communities in the surrounding countries. Many of the larger and more missions-active churches have church-planting and training activities in, and some even broadcast their worship services to, countries such as India, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and elsewhere. While there are also religious sensitivities in these countries, these are often more difficult to police in a systematic way than in Singapore. Churches often anchor their presence in these countries with aid projects such as medical missions, orphanages, poverty relief, and even (at ‘opportune’ times) disaster relief.

Thus in response to the Tsunami disaster of 2004, many churches in Singapore sent resources and teams of volunteers to afflicted areas in Aceh, Nias, coastal Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and elsewhere. Relief groups from other religious organizations in Singapore, such as Mercy Relief (a Muslim group) and the Renci Hospital and Medicare Centre (a Buddhist organization) and the Buddhist Fellowship of Singapore, also participated in relief work. However, the majority of the larger organizations sent from Singapore, such as Habitat for Humanity, the YMCA, Touch Community Service International, the Salvation Army, City Harvest Community Services Association, and World Vision Singapore (not including the smaller missions sent by individual churches) are Christian, as a newspaper report indicates (Yap 2005, p. S4).

This indicates the readiness of the churches to mount overseas operations, which they do on a regular basis even without the impetus of major disasters. These overseas efforts still have to operate with care and sensitivity, and there have already been tensions arising out of the perception that Christian organizations are taking advantage of “people who are weak and vulnerable” (Ghosh 2005, p. 32). However, there is also considerable positive publicity and goodwill generated by these activities that also contribute to Singapore's international relations, which, particularly with its Muslim neighbours, can sometimes be strained. Thus an Indonesia government spokesperson was quoted in the wake of the Tsunami and relief efforts as saying that while Indonesians tended to be ‘suspicious’ of many relief efforts, neighbours such as Singapore and Malaysia are ‘different’, and ‘sincere’; Singapore “has played a big role in this crisis,” and this is likely to “affect other facets of our ties” with Singapore and other aid-providing countries (Pereira 2005, p. 8).

It thus might be said that the overseas efforts of churches, especially in countries in the region, despite some potential for fallout from religious sensitivities, generally fit into the nation's efforts to strengthen ties with these countries. It also fits into a larger governmental ethos for Singaporeans to think and operate globally as a means of overcoming the limitations of Singapore's small size, and to strengthen Singapore's position as a services and tourism hub; Singapore, as the ‘Antioch of Asia’ proclaimed by several well-known Christian leaders, is already something of a hub for Christian organizations and large international Christian meetings and conventions (Goh 2005b, pp. 837–839). This eagerness to operate transnationally is also linked with a certain amount of cautiousness in the domestic affairs of the church, at least as far as evangelism to people of other faiths is concerned. Churches in Singapore are very careful to play their part in interfaith dialogues and other activities, and to sound the politically correct tone expressing respect for the religious beliefs of others, and supporting the government's position on religious harmony.

In addition, the preservation of churches and church services in languages other than English is itself part of a strategy for differentiated identity. While the majority of Christians are sufficiently competent in English to participate in an English-medium church service, services in other languages – most notably Mandarin, although also Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and others, and other vernacular languages such as Tamil and Hindi – are also required to cater to Christians who are more comfortable in the other languages. Yet the numbers, apart from the Mandarin congregations, seldom work out; this is especially true for the services in the Chinese dialects, which mainly cater to small and rapidly dwindling numbers of elderly Chinese Christians, who because of their educational background can speak neither Mandarin nor English. Church services in Chinese dialects normally form a small appendage to English-medium services, catering to younger and better-educated Christians, in the same church or in other churches of the denominational family. The larger independent churches such as New Creation and City Harvest, whose total congregational strengths are 15,000 and 23,000 respectively and which have English-language services each with several thousand worshippers, actually have to schedule their non-English services at other venues – in the case of New Creation Church, at venues which “change from time to time” (New Creation ‘Church Services’; City Harvest ‘Service Schedules’). Churches such as these continue to make the extra effort to offer services in Mandarin and Chinese dialects, even though these non-English services are less central and key to their large and expanding main English-language services. There is also limited interaction between the different congregations and this threatens a lack of coherence to the church overall. This is also despite the obvious facts that numbers matter in these so-called ‘megachurches’, and even without their non-English congregations, these churches would already be several times larger than the average church. Apart from stemming from a zeal to reach every possible believer without language differences posing a barrier, these non-English services can also be seen as a means of insisting on the local identity of the church, particularly important given the dynamically internationalized nature (in worship style, networks and relationships) of these megachurches.

Mainline denominations such as the Methodists not only have churches which offer non-English in addition to English services, they also have churches which operate mostly in other languages, mainly Mandarin and Tamil, although some of the Chinese churches also have significant numbers of dialect-speaking members, and are organized according to administrative ‘Conferences’, namely the Chinese Annual Conference and the Emmanuel Tamil Annual Conference. The commitment to linguistic-cultural diversification is thus a consistently serious one, across different denominations and organizational types, and quite independent of the logic of numbers and the temptation to focus on the core Anglophone clientele of the churches.

Churches in Singapore, particularly the bigger and better-resourced ones, also position themselves as socially concerned, particularly with those segments of society which are also key concerns of the government. Large churches and denominations groups like the Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore, the Anglican Diocese of Singapore, the Methodist Church in Singapore, City Harvest and New Creation all invest considerable resources in a variety of social and community services, often establishing separate organizations (such as the Methodist Welfare Services or the City Harvest Community Services Association) to focus on this work without detracting from the worship life of the church. Although their ministry areas vary from organization to organization, and also cover a wide range of areas, certain key areas constantly recur. These include youth involvement (sports, music and performing arts) and counselling; educational services (such as kindergartens and tuition centres); family services; the elderly; and ‘second chance’ programmes aiding various groups of offenders. Frequently, the service involves mobilizing the able (either church members or non-members such as school groups) to provide care for the less fortunate, thus nurturing and propagating at large the ethos of social concern. Other services which sometimes receive attention, but do not feature as prominently and as consistently across the churches, include those to the terminally ill, the handicapped and special needs groups, and foreign labourer groups such as Bangladeshi and Tamil workers, many of whom do find themselves in strained financial and personal circumstances.

This recurring pattern of key services is in part explained by the different types of resources available to churches, but also by the logic of Christianity's relationship to the state and larger society. The key services tend to be among those that the government reiterates as areas of concern for Singapore society. Most of these come under the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCDYS), which identifies its main mission as that of building a “cohesive and resilient society” by fostering “socially responsible individuals”, “inspired and committed youth”, “strong and stable families”, “a caring and active community” and “a sporting people” (MCDYS ‘Home’). There is thus a strong correspondence between the key social ministries offered by the main churches, and the main target areas identified by the MCDYS. In some of the more image-conscious churches such as City Harvest, there is actually an explicit correlation between some of the key ministries emphasized by the church, and the government and public discourses calling attention to those needs (and also, of course, acknowledging the work of community services groups responding to those needs, like the City Harvest Community Services Association). City Harvest provides statistics and reports for its various community services, which give prominence to its educational work, especially that of helping troubled students turn their lives and results around. Although this may not be the service which attracted the most number of users (services to children and the elderly had more users), it is a strongly-featured service because of (among other things) its resonance with government emphases on ‘second chance’ services and opportunities for needy segments of the population; this in turn garners considerable press coverage, details of which (the titles, synopses, and publication dates of some 11 articles all from the year 2005) the church website lists (City Harvest Church 2007, ‘Statistics’).

This strategy and positioning is more complex than simply tailoring church community services to the needs identified by the government. At a deeper level, it continues a type of tacit compact between the government and Christian organizations, in which the latter find a kind of justification in providing certain services which the government is unable to fully provide. A similar relationship occurred in Singapore in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when newly-established Christian missions found a social niche and government acceptance by providing the types of educational services which the colonial government was not prepared to provide (Goh 2003, p. 33). In the case of contemporary Singapore, there are government ministries and agencies (MCDYS, the National Council of Social Services or NCSS, the Community Development Councils or CDCs dispersed at the level of districts) dedicated to addressing these social needs. However, even if the government agencies had the financial resources and power to provide care and relief for all the needy constituents, this would not fulfil the MCDYS's goal of nurturing “socially responsible individuals” and “a caring and active community”; these can only be achieved through extensive and multiplying partnerships, and it is here that the churches (especially the larger and better-resourced ones) are happy to expend the energies and resources to become part of the government's vision of a caring community.

To emphasize this more strongly, at one level churches in Singapore play a flexible role in which they both oppose certain aspects of Singapore society and the policies which engender these aspects, as well as symbiotically partner government agencies in doing the work of addressing the social problems arising from those aspects. One good example is the churches’ stand in relation to the Integrated Resorts (IR) proposals. Early in 2004, the government announced that it would deliberate on the possibility of granting approval for the construction in Singapore of two integrated resorts incorporating casinos. The public response to this was mixed, with many people welcoming the economic benefits as well as easy access to gambling, while many religious groups sounded warning notes. The issue proved to be a rallying point for many Christians in Singapore, who gathered to pray against the decision, wrote letters to the Forum expressing explicitly Christian views on the issue, and circulated emails through their Christian networks, encouraging other Christians to pray against the decision and to sign an online petition, which eventually gathered tens of thousands of e-signatures, not all of which were from Christians of course. These activities were at least implicitly encouraged by churches, and in the case of lunchtime prayer rallies held in a well-known Anglican church, where in addition to other prayer issues the issue of the IRs was repeatedly raised, there was explicit support by church leaders.

In April 2005 the government announced their decision to proceed with the project to construct two IRs. Since then, the response of the churches to this fait accompli has been to gradually turn from making a moral objection to the project, and beginning to address ways and means of controlling potential damage to families and individuals. Recently the Methodist Church in Singapore organized a Youth Gambling Prevention Road Show, which was supported by the National Council of Problem Gambling (NCPG) – a body established by the government in August 2005 as part of its response to the potential social fallout from the IRs (Tan 2007, p. 1). Such moves are indicative of the churches’ willingness to partner with the government in limiting the social ills that the IRs are widely seen as likely to bring. This strategy is thus part of a pattern of the churches’ dual positioning – simultaneously opposed at a moral-spiritual level to certain government policies, yet also collaborating with the government to ameliorate their consequences.

The churches’ community initiatives on education and children might also be seen as an attempt to redress the problems of a fast-paced and highly demanding educational system which has limited tolerance for those unable for various reasons to keep up with its demands. Meanwhile, family counselling and training initiatives might also be seen as the churches’ attempts to redress the problems arising from the occupational and social pressures on the family living in Singap ore's materialistic and heavily performance-oriented ethos. Thus more than simply selecting key community service areas which are areas emphasized by the government, churches are actually flexibly positioned to simultaneously take a moral and spiritual position, which often runs counter to governmental and public discourses about material success, high performance and economic development. Meanwhile, they are also reinforcing the government's position by their willingness to play a prominent role in the government's own attempts to limit the social fallout from their policy decisions.

Conclusion

The case of Christianity in Singapore reveals the complexity of the ideological and practical involvement of both state and subject group in the management of the highly sensitive matter of race in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment. Christianity in Singapore may be something of a special case, because of the combination of characteristics – the historical and structural association with European modernity, Anglophone or Western European languages and cultures, global networking, segregation from cultural-religious traditionalism, and resource-richness. However, it does indicate something of the condition of Christianity in other countries in Asia, where, apart from the Philippines, it is usually a marginalized minority religion, but often also rich in resources and networks. With the rapid social changes that come together with socio-economic development in a number of Asian countries, it is likely that Christianity will both come under increased scrutiny and controls, and also be increasingly associated with the aspects of modernity tied to those social changes and characterizing some of the social elites that emerge from them.

While this paper has focused on Christianity, the issues discussed are also pertinent to other racial-cultural identities in contemporary Asian states which share similar combinations of characteristics: minority status with a claim to cultural centrality; regulated and constrained and yet resource-rich and with certain elite characteristics; global in operation and yet locally engaged. Flexible identities such as those that have emerged with Christianity in Singapore, managed strategically and in covert and unacknowledged ways, indicate a way for some of these peculiarly-positioned racial-cultural identities to be negotiated in new state-subject group relationships. This also suggests the necessity of developing increasingly complex models of state governance of religious identities, especially non-dominant and non-official ones, than simply those within the terms of policing and suppression with the concomitant terms of insurgence, overt civil action and separatist violence; and of applying these to uncover the complex interactions of statehood and religious identities in Asian nations increasingly transformed by global influences and transnational operations.

The cultural geography suggested by this analysis of Christianity in Singapore points to the ways in which Christianity and modernity (including Anglophone education, cosmopolitan culture, global capitalism) tend to draw together in a type of cultural isomorphy based on historical and institutional factors. This is quite clearly seen in the heartlander-cosmopolitan, traditional-modern tensions in Singapore society, but also in the logic of various other transnational flows and networks, from Filipino and Korean expatriate churches in Singapore (and expatriates worshipping in Singapore churches) to the Singapore bases established by global Christian organizations, to links and modelling between Singapore megachurches and those in other countries. Within its other ‘hub’ ambitions, in terms of tourism, transportation, financial services and certain sectors of research such the life sciences, Singapore has a lesser-acknowledged but culturally-significant role as a hub for Christianity in Southeast Asia, and linked to other Christian cultural centres in Asia, such as Chennai, Seoul and Manila, and in the rest of the World, primarily in Australia and the US. These flows are to a significant extent at odds with and moderated by the strongly governanced state religious sphere, in a tension similar to that between some Asian nation-states and the institutions of global capitalism. However, as the local evangelical scope of churches in Singapore continues to be circumscribed by the Religious Harmony Act, and as Singapore's economic and cultural modernization proceeds apace, Singaporean Christianity is likely to exert a greater centripetal force, and to seek increasingly ‘flexible’ strategies to manifest itself.

Acknowledgements

Part of the work done for this paper was supported by a research grant (number R-103-000-055-112) from the National University of Singapore. The author is also grateful to the referees for their useful and insightful comments, which have contributed significantly to this revised version.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robbie B. H. Goh∗

∗Robbie B. H. Goh is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Singapore

Notes

1. Of the main socio-economic indicators, the attainment of a university education is probably the least distinctive, with Buddhism in particular being spread out quite evenly among adherents with varying levels of education. However, even here the two biggest percentages go to Christians (33%) and those professing no religion (28%), with Buddhists capturing only 23% of all Singaporeans with a university degree, despite being the religion with the largest number of adherents.

2. The scope and aims of the present paper do not permit a comprehensive account of religion in Singapore; however, this is available from works such as Clammer (1991); Kuo and Tong (1995); Goh (2006); Tong (2007); and from select parts of some of the items in the references section of this particle.

3. This is seen, for example, in the ‘Isaiah incident’ of 1896, in which a complaint against the Methodist Mission's Anglo-Chinese School, in the form of a letter to the press alleging the school's claims about the extent and success of its evangelical work among its students, led to a significant albeit temporary decrease in its enrolments. See Goh (2003), p. 31.